FURIOUS Martin Canning has told his Hamilton players they are playing for their futures – as well as his own.
Canning has cited Hamilton’s 4-1 defeat at the hands of League Two side Annan in Saturday’s Scottish Cup encounter as the nadir of his seventeen-year professional career, but the humiliating result is just the latest in a desperate run of form that has yielded just one draw and five defeats from their last six matches in all competitions.
Despite enjoying the backing of the club’s owners in the past, particularly when his side went on a thirteen-game run without a win immediately after he took over from Alex Neil, Canning certainly isn’t wet behind the ears, and he knows that his position will come under close scrutiny if Hamilton’s fortunes don’t improve soon.
He said: “I’m still angry. I probably will be for the next five years! I’ll always be having a wee think back to this.
“It’s a low point for me in my career. As a player I’ve been on the opposite end playing for a wee club where we’ve beaten a bigger club, but I’d never been on the end of it before. I don’t like it. I’m a winner and I want to win and enjoy it.
“There are occasions when [criticising the players] is appropriate and I think it still sometimes has to be done – and I did it here on Monday after watching that video because it just wasn’t good enough.
“I’m not going to accept that – as a player, a manager or a coach or anybody associated with this club. We shouldn’t be going down to Annan and losing 4-1. So there was definitely anger aired on Monday.
“I speak with the owners weekly – sometimes daily, by telephone – about different things that we’re doing so we’ve chatted about this. Obviously, from my point of view, we need to win games. Results are the most important thing.
“They’ve supported me to the hilt and as best they can and that’s appreciated. But, from my point of view, I’ve been involved in football for a long time and I know that it’s results that we need. If we don’t start picking up wins then that’s got to be an issue. So I’m putting pressure on myself to turn things round.
“When you look at the performance on Saturday – and the couple of weeks before – there have been a couple who haven’t performed to the levels I’d expect of them. The performances at times haven’t been good enough. We’ve conceded far too many soft goals which I’m really disappointed more than angry with.
“We’ve gone through it, we’ve analysed it and talked about it and the guys know it’s not acceptable.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here